Then I crawled back to my narrow bed, so nearly exchanged for a narrower, and laid my treasure on my shrunken breast, and turned on my side, that it might not slide away. I felt as if there were two Kits now—one who knew nothing about it, and the other who wanted it all to himself. And perhaps that other Kit was Kitty. How long I continued in this crazed condition, it is impossible for me to say; but as sure as the goodness of God is with us, it saved my reason and my life. For by-and-by, a warmth of blood flowed through me, and a sense of being in a large sweet world; then memory awoke, and pain was gone, and I was like a little child looking at its mother. I did not read a word, nor care to read; but I knew whose hand was on my heart, and I would not disturb it by a stir of thought, but was satisfied with it, for it was everything. And so I fell into a long deep sleep; and when I awoke, I was a man again. CHAPTER XXVIII. OUT OF ALL REASON. WORSE troubles than those of the troublesome body were visiting one worth a thousand of me. Captain Fairthorn was still in Scotland, while his fair daughter was being worried, as a lamb among playful wolves. Without any aid her step-mother was enough to supply her with constant misery; but even her malice was more easy to endure than the insolent attentions of two vile men. To these the poor girl was exposed every day; for if she took refuge in her own room, she was bodily compelled to come down again, and her gentle appeals and even strong disdain were treated as a child’s coquetry. There are few things more truculent to a woman, even a very young one, than the jocular assumption that she does not know her mind, and perhaps has little of that article to know. Sir Cumberleigh Hotchpot proceeded regularly upon that assumption; and though Kitty had the sweetest temper ever bestowed as a blessing to the owner and all around, this foregone conclusion and heavenly pity (from a creature by no means celestial) drove her sometimes towards the tremulous line which severs sanity from insanity. For it has been said, and perhaps with truth, that the largest and soundest of human minds could not remain either large or sound, if all the other minds it had to deal with combined to pronounce it both small and unsound. Under the hostile light, it could not save itself from shrinking; it would glance about vainly for a gleam to suit its own, and then straighten to a line with a cross at either end, like the pupil of a cat in the fierce light of the sun.